AMD, Dropbox, and VMware Talk Cloud and the Future of Hardware

The execs discussed everything from evolving cloud and chip architectures to AI, Moore's Law, and the next era of computing at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference.

At last week's Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference, executives from AMD, Dropbox, and VMware discussed the future of cloud computing. I used the opportunity to get their views about where the chips that power it are heading.

VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger talked about how the cloud has gone mainstream, but cautioned that the "laws of physics"—as well as the laws of economics and actual laws—mean that not everything belongs on the public cloud. He said hybrid clouds are now common, evolving in response to regulatory changes such as GDPR that may push some applications to local clouds or on-premise servers.

Gelsinger proclaimed we are now in a "quad-core" era with public, private, telco, and edge IoT clouds, predicting that "the multi-cloud era is in front of us."

AMD CEO Lisa Su said "you need different clouds for different use cases," mentioning finance, entertainment and gaming, and blockchain as examples. Su estimates that we are still in the early stages of the cloud buildout, with large public cloud providers driving a lot of the compute while medium-sized companies think about how to do the next big things.

"We've been talking about cloud computing for the last 10 years," said Su, who expects "the next 10 years will be more exciting than the last 10."

Dropbox COO Dennis Woodside agreed, pointing to big growth opportunities outside the U.S. Woodside said that despite the big players, computing is more competitive for end-users than it was 10 years ago due to the growth of iOS and Android to compete with Windows.

Woodside said he saw companies like Dropbox and Slack solving problems the big companies can't, because they are inherently cross-platform. "Everybody can bring to work what will help them get their work done," he said, noting that a good product can reach a global scale much faster as a result of new technologies.

Gelsinger keyed in on how that opportunity extends to the rest of the world. Having just returned from climbing Kilimanjaro to raise money to help girls in Nairobi attend high school, he added that "half the planet hasn't yet been touched with mobility and the internet."

Dropbox COO Dennis Woodside

Gelsinger and Su both discussed the need for better trust and security. Su expanded on that point, talking about how the ability to create a more secure environment exists, but requires hard work and partners. She discussed building new hooks into hardware and focusing the ecosystem on the problem.

Gelsinger mentioned he spoke with some of the heads of tops banks, who said they have as many as 250 security vendors each. "It's just nuts," he said. "We have to make the 250 become 20, by building intrinsic security into the platform."

Gelsinger said "four superpowers" are driving computing today: cloud, mobility, AI, and IoT, and that these superpowers are "accelerating each other."

Su said we have an incredible amount of data today, and that "computing is not smart enough." She said there is plenty of innovation yet to come over the next 5 to 10 years.

AMD CEO Lisa Su

I asked the panelists about transistor scaling and the slowing down of Moore's Law, and consequently whether this is something the industry should be worried about over the next 5, 10, or 15 years.

"It's absolutely true that Moore's Law is slowing down," Su said. "It's our job as the hardware providers to continue to provide innovation and that increase in performance and capability [anyway.]"

Su said this can happen through changes in architecture, and through the use of different solutions in different applications, such as GPU compute for AI and machine learning. "Frankly, I think it's actually good because it allows companies to focus on what are the next big things, and how can we solve a different set of problems," she said.

Gelsinger, who was Intel's CTO before moving to VMware, said that rather than Moore's Law doubling every two years, it's now more like doubling every three years. He believes this will continue as we get to 7nm and beyond. "It's not like it's dead yet, by any means, but it has slowed," he said.

Gelsinger said we're about to see a raft of new machine architectures that are optimized toward AI and ML workloads, as well as other kinds of hardware innovations such as persistent memory, and probably even the first practical quantum computing in the next 5-10 years.

More importantly, he said, cloud computing by its very nature is distributed computing. So while Moore's Law may not be impacting individual cores, cloud computing can essentially scale up to hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of cores operating on parallel distributed problems. In the end, he said "computing is in no way a limitation, nor Moore's Law a limitation, for architectural and algorithmic innovation."

Fortune's Andrew Nusca, who moderated the session, asked Gelsinger about Dell's purchase of VMware and its tracking system. He responded that Dell has been "a huge accelerant" to VMware's growth, while noting that his company has continued to have an independent board. Fortune's Adam Lashinsky asked about rumors that he was a candidate for the open job of CEO of Intel. To this, Gelsinger replied simply: he is very happy running VMware, and "the future is software."

About the Author

Michael J. Miller is chief information officer at Ziff Brothers Investments, a private investment firm. From 1991 to 2005, Miller was editor-in-chief of PC Magazine, responsible for the editorial direction, quality and presentation of the world's largest computer publication.

Until late 2006, Miller was the Chief Content Officer for Ziff Davis Media, responsible for overseeing the editorial positions of Ziff Davis's magazines, websites, and events. As Editorial Director for Ziff Davis Publishing since 1997, Miller took an active role in helping to identify new editorial needs in the marketplace and in shaping the editorial positioning of every Ziff ... See Full Bio